Banning Players and BattlEye Bans on DayZ
Ban DayZ players who are online or offline, set timed and permanent bans, unban, keep your ban list across wipes, and understand global BattlEye bans you cannot lift.
Your Bans and Global Bans Are Different Things
| Ban type | Who issues it | Who can lift it |
|---|---|---|
| Server ban | You, on your server | You |
| BattlEye global ban | BattlEye, for cheating, on every protected server | Only BattlEye |
| Bohemia game ban | Bohemia Interactive, on the player's DayZ account | Only Bohemia |
If a player says they are "banned" but you never banned them, they most likely have a global ban. GameGrid and server owners cannot see or lift those. Point the player to BattlEye's or Bohemia's support pages to appeal.
Banning a Player Who Is Online
Use the Console tab:
1. Run players and find the player's number.
2. Run ban <number> <minutes> <reason>, for example ban 5 0 Cheating for a permanent ban, or ban 5 4320 Toxic chat for three days.
3. BattlEye kicks the player and keeps them out until the ban ends. Read the Console's reply, and run bans to check the ban is listed.
The reason is shown to the player, so keep it short and clear. A permanent ban uses 0 minutes (or no minutes at all).
Banning a Player Who Is Offline
Offline players have no number, so ban them by BattlEye GUID:
addBan 0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef 0 Raid exploit, see DiscordWhere to get the GUID:
- from an earlier
playersoutput, if you noted it; - by converting the player's Steam64 ID. A BattlEye GUID is calculated from the Steam64 ID, and free converters exist online. See Steam64, DayZ Player ID and BattlEye GUID.
GameGrid masks player IP addresses in RCon replies, so bans are by GUID, not by IP address. IP bans are easy to get around and can block innocent players on shared connections anyway.
Unbanning
1. Run bans in the Console tab. Each ban is listed with a ban number, the GUID (IP addresses are masked), time left and reason.
2. Run removeBan <ban number>.
3. Run writeBans so the change is saved to disk.
Ban numbers shift when a ban is removed, so run bans again before removing a second one.
Where Bans Are Stored
A DayZ server has two ban lists:
| File | Holds | Managed with |
|---|---|---|
battleye/bans.txt | BattlEye bans by GUID, with minutes and reason | RCon: ban, addBan, removeBan, writeBans, loadBans |
ban.txt | DayZ's own ban list, one player ID per line | Banned Players under Player Management on the Settings tab, then a restart |
Use RCon for day-to-day bans: it acts immediately and BattlEye keeps bans.txt in its own format. If you edit battleye/bans.txt by hand, stop the server first or run loadBans afterwards, because BattlEye rewrites the file and can overwrite a hand edit.
The Banned Players list takes the 44-character DayZ player ID, the same ID that appears after id= in the admin logs, and saves the reason after it as a // comment. Restart the server after banning to be sure the ban applies, and use RCon bans when a ban must act at once. The disableBanlist key in serverDZ.cfg turns the file off.
Bans and Wipes
Ban lists are not part of the saved world. A world or character wipe deletes the save data in mpmissions/<mission>/storage_1/; bans.txt and ban.txt are elsewhere and stay.
A Wipe Server from the Admin tab is different: it rebuilds the whole server as new, and your ban lists go with everything else. Download both files first if you plan a full rebuild, then upload them again afterwards.
Evidence First
Before banning on a report, check the admin log (.ADM in profiles/): it records connections, chat, hits and kills with times and positions. For base raids you need build and placement logging switched on. See Reading DayZ Admin Logs.
Keep a note of each ban with the date, reason and evidence, for example in a private Discord channel. It makes appeals much easier.